Inside the Magic: Nikola Vucevic’s importance to Orlando is clear

ORLANDO, Fla. — Be careful when making judgments based on an NBA preseason.

After all, preseason games are mere exhibitions. Coaches often experiment with lineups just to see if any of them have potential. Winning and losing means nothing compared to the value of building solid habits, putting players into rhythm and getting players into shape.

“It’s preseason,” Orlando Magic forward Al-Farouq Aminu said. “This is where you want to struggle. This is where you want to get better.”

In their first three exhibitions, the Magic clobbered the San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks by an average of 23 points per game. Injuries to key players marred their last two exhibitions, blowout losses to the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers.

So what, if anything, should we conclude about the Magic’s October so far?

Here are my takeaways.

Vooch matters … a lot

Despite improved depth at every position, an injury to Nikola Vucevic, Terrence Ross or D.J. Augustin still could send the team into a tailspin, especially if that injury occurs during a tough spot in the schedule.

All of Orlando’s top six players — Augustin, Evan Fournier, Aaron Gordon, Jonathan Isaac, Vucevic and Ross — are critical.

But Augustin, Ross and Vucevic do things no one else on the roster can match. Augustin is the only person on the roster who shot above 40 percent from 3-point range in each of the last two seasons. Ross not only provides instant offense off the bench, but he can score even if defenders guard him tightly.

Vucevic is the team’s best all-around offensive player. He can score in the low post and space the floor with his long-range shooting. But his passing and his decision-making make him unique, eclipsed in those areas at his position perhaps only by Denver Nuggets MVP candidate Nikola Jokic.

The losses to the Celtics and Sixers provided harsh reminders of Vucevic’s value. With Vucevic sitting out because of a mild ankle sprain, the Magic looked discombobulated. The team turned the ball over, struggled to get into its offense and often failed to generate decent shot opportunities.

Caveats must be made, for sure. Fournier missed part of the exhibition against Boston and the entire exhibition against Philadelphia because of back spasms, while Ross missed the exhibition against Philly with an ankle sprain of his own. Plus, the Celtics have a top-notch defense, while the Sixers have several strong defenders.

That said, the performance against the Sixers upset coach Steve Clifford.

“This was incredibly disappointing to me, just how we played: soft, just totally no purpose for the majority of the game,” Clifford told reporters immediately afterward.

“We have to be a team. We have enough offense if we’ll play together. So, we can be a good offensive team, but you can’t play like we played tonight. That’s crazy. I just told them it’s not OK. I don’t care if it’s preseason or not. You’re not building the right habits. We didn’t have the right mentality, and they had their way with us.”

Even when healthy, Orlando’s offense will endure stretches when its ball movement wanes, but having Vucevic on the court will limit those instances.

“We’re gonna need Vooch,” Gordon said. “We’re not going to do what we need to do if we don’t have Vooch on the floor. But at the same time, we’ve got to be able to put a group of five out there that competes and that can win games.”

No wonder the Magic in July re-signed Vucevic to a four-year contract worth a total of $100 million. He makes his teammates better. Without Vucevic on the floor, it has been difficult for Orlando’s offense to gain any traction at all except in transition.

“For the whole of the preseason,” Clifford said, “once we’ve broken the lineup, we haven’t been able to score in the half court at all, including the first two games. For instance, (in) San Antonio, we scored a lot of points because we scored off our defense.”

Gordon exploiting mismatches is promising

What is Gordon’s ceiling on offense?

Even after five full NBA seasons, that remains unclear. The answer depends in large part on whether he can raise his 3-point shooting from last season’s career high of 34.9 percent into the high 30s and force opponents to extend their defense farther out on the perimeter.

Early this preseason, though, Gordon showed some welcome flashes, including 6-of-8 shooting and three assists in the preseason opener in San Antonio and a 10-of-17 shooting night in Detroit.

Against the Pistons, especially, Gordon did a superb job of recognizing mismatches and attacking those mismatches.

The video that follows is an extreme example but instructive nonetheless. Here, 6-foot-11 center Andre Drummond guards Gordon on the perimeter, and Gordon drives past Drummond with ease.

Get off the runway, @Double0AG is taking off 🛫 pic.twitter.com/K2juzr2ypp

— Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) October 8, 2019

Once the regular season arrives, look for Gordon to post-up defenders if he has size mismatches in his favor. An improved post-up game was one of the areas Gordon emphasized during the offseason.

Gordon struggled in the two games Vucevic missed, going 1-for-14 against Boston and 2-for-12 against Philadelphia. He forced too many shots, but with Vucevic out and Fournier ailing, Gordon did not have many mismatches to exploit, either.

Isaac’s added bulk is paying off

Isaac entered training camp at 230 pounds, which is 21 pounds heavier than his playing weight at the end of last season.

The extra muscle has helped on defense without sacrificing his dexterity on offense.

On Oct. 9 against the Atlanta Hawks, Isaac helped limit talented forward John Collins to an 0-for-8 shooting night.

Isaac’s overall activity level has been encouraging, too. Isaac has blocked eight shots this preseason.

And in recent games, Isaac proved he can still run the floor. Midway through the third quarter against Philly, Augustin stole the ball from a Sixers guard and threw the ball upcourt to Isaac, who finished the play beautifully with an acrobatic layup.

Fultz can help

Markelle Fultz has not played in a regular-season game since last November, but he has shown this preseason that he can be a vast upgrade over Jerian Grant and Isaiah Briscoe, the two players who spent most of last season as Augustin’s primary backups.

Fultz’s 12-point, five-assist, two-turnover performance against Philly was one of Orlando’s few bright spots that night.

As he has gotten more comfortable this month, Fultz has displayed his uncanny knack at maneuvering into the lane, where he can either finish in traffic or dish the ball to a teammate.

“His strength was one of our real weaknesses last year,” Clifford said. “We struggled to get the ball going to the basket.”

Again, caveats need to be made.

Fultz played in just 33 games during his first two NBA seasons, and he will need more time to regain his sharpness. Plus, his jumper, particularly from beyond 16 feet, still needs extensive work. But since Fultz is only 21 years old, the Magic will stress patience. As long as Fultz remains healthy, time is on his side.

But even now, even with plenty of work left to do, his playmaking and his defense should help Orlando.

The Magic’s positional size can be a real advantage

The agility, height and long arms of Aminu, Fultz, Gordon, Isaac, Mo Bamba and Michael Carter-Williams have the potential to wreak havoc on opposing offenses.

Orlando’s defense forced turnover after turnover during its first three preseason exhibitions, although it should be noted that those opponents were not sharp and often relied on lineups featuring second- or third-string players.

Even a few plays against the Celtics and Sixers provided some hope. For example, in the first play in the highlight compilation below, Bamba, Carter-Williams and Isaac converge on Tobias Harris to swat a shot out of bounds.

Best moments from the game 🏀 pic.twitter.com/WtVQRgSPEb

— Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) October 14, 2019

Questions remain, of course. Can Bamba play with the same energy he showed in the first two preseason games over an entire regular season? Will Isaac remain relatively injury-free for a second consecutive season? How much playing time will Carter-Williams receive? And will Fournier, whom Clifford lauded for his defense last season, continue to defend well against opposing shooting guards?

The Magic finished the 2018-19 regular season eighth in defensive efficiency, holding opponents to 107.6 points per 100 possessions.

But with better depth and now in their second season with Clifford as their coach, the Magic should finish 2019-20 better than eighth in that category.

A reading assist

On Tuesday, Augustin, Bamba, Fournier, Gordon, Isaac, Ross and Vucevic received some of the loudest cheers of their Magic tenures.

The amazing part?

At that moment, the Magic weren’t even playing a game.

Approximately 8,500 elementary school students packed Amway Center’s lower bowl. They visited the arena because they had excelled in Orange County Public Schools’ Pick, Read & Roll program, which encourages fourth-graders to improve their reading skills.

The children watched a performance by the Magic’s new 407 Hip-Hop Dance Team and listened to Q&As about reading with the players.

Gordon, for instance, told the children his favorite book is “Ender’s Game.”

As a child growing up in San Jose, Calif., Gordon never had a chance to see a professional athlete speak in-person during an off-court or off-the-field event. So Gordon relished his chance to give kids that opportunity.

“It was good to see their energy,” Gordon said after the event. “They were loud. They were excited to be there. It just reminds me of when I was that young and how cool that experience would have been just to come to a professional facility like Amway (Center) and see NBA players. The whole atmosphere was a good time.”

Aaron Gordon and six of his Magic teammates on Tuesday stressed the value of reading to local fourth- and fifth-graders (Fernando Medina / NBAE via Getty Images)

Friendly advice

Amway Center also hosted a field trip of another kind in recent days.

Clifford invited longtime friends Tom Thibodeau and Andy Greer to visit Orlando and watch Magic practices and games.

From 2000 to 2007, Clifford worked alongside Thibodeau and Greer as assistant coaches with the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets.

Clifford often invites former coaching colleagues to his teams’ practices. When Clifford coached the Charlotte Hornets, he hosted Jeff Van Gundy, Stan Van Gundy, Eddie Jordan and Mike D’Antoni at separate times. In each case, Clifford encouraged constructive criticism.

“The year Stan came to training camp,” Clifford recalled, “we were up in Asheville, and I’m getting up in the morning and I got these five pages of notes under my door, basically saying, ‘I don’t know how you ever got this job, but you’re not doing very well!’ ”

(Top photo of Nikola Vucevic: Kim Klement / USA Today)